File:Emitted Gravitational Radiation Halts Pulsar’s Spin up.jpg

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English: As the pulsar picks up speed through accretion, it becomes distorted from a perfect sphere due to subtle changes in the crust, depicted here by an equatorial bulge. Such slight distortion is enough to produce gravitational waves. Material flowing onto the pulsar surface from its companion star tends to quicken the spin, but loss of energy released as gravitational radiation tends to slow the spin due to the principle of conservation of energy. This competition may reach an equilibrium, setting a natural speed limit for millisecond pulsars beyond which they cannot be spun up.
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Source http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0702pulsarspeed.html, http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010100/a010144/index.html
Author Dana Berry/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
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7 September 2013

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current11:26, 7 September 2013Thumbnail for version as of 11:26, 7 September 20132,256 × 2,486 (1.38 MB)Stas1995User created page with UploadWizard

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